Christina

So I met a new friend the other day at the church softball game (which I did not watch). She's friends with my sister, my mother loves her, and she's going to seminary in the fall. We're now Facebook friends and she went to the movie with us last night (the movie btw was ok- I really wish they had cast someone other than Nicholas Cage- none of the romances were believable- oh well). Back to Christina- She's hilarious in the snarky cool like that way- and so of course when she joked that she was real hurt that I didn't mention her in my blog, I decided I would dedicate this blog to her. : ) I'm all about people pleasing- changing my blog design so my apparently blind best friend can read it and now name-dropping for a new friend.

Today went better. Hunter decided to return to his body and evict the demon that possessed him over the past three days. I far prefer Hunter to the crazy child that visited with us. SO- I'm glad he's back. He even slept in til 8 today- and since it was "my day" to get up with him- that was oh so very nice. We went swimming- a conquered temporary fear for Hunter (the demon child decided to be traumatized for no reason) so with Hunter back- we convinced him swimming was for the cool kids. Bath time - also a temporary fear induced by crazy child- was much better tonight. Think of today as a full day of successful therapy. Rock therapy actually. My mother convinced Hunter to do everything through the cunning use of rocks. No kidding. She's a little crazy awesome with creative methods of parenting. When Hunter was about to crawl out of my arms up the pool wall- Mom dashed to the yard to grab rocks and proceeded to thoroughly entertain and distract my son from his pretend fears by throwing and fetching the rocks from the bottom of the pool. Soon Hunter was throwing the rocks and my mother and sister took turns getting them and swimming between my legs to surface triumphantly with the victorious pebbles. Hunter was nipple-deep in the water before the end of the pool-time and actually agreed that the pool was fun. He didn't want to learn to float, but he thought it was cool that all of us could "sleep" face up on the pool water.

Again- with the bath- Hunter wouldn't sit down- so Mom grabbed a rock- and basically the same therapy worked. 20 minutes later and we were convincing Hunter bath time was over and he needed to brush his teeth. All these baby/toddler books leave out one very important tool you need: family. Help is so nice. Even though I'm ready to go home and a little stir-crazy here- it is so good to be with family. I really wish we lived closer.

So there ya go. Tomorrow we are expecting a tropical depression of some sort to head our way, the truck full of Grandmother's stuff, Grandmother's new hearing aids, and an ENT appt to boot. And Jessa's driving to Auburn for a wedding. I'm really going to miss her. I'll talk more about that later. Oh- and correction- Memaush did not coin the phrase "y'all stay up all night"- it was Grandmother! And now my Dad says it on occasion. Memaush would say before retiring to bed:

"It's been real."